Freshman runner Adrienne DiRaddo gives a cross country update as the team prepares for the Chile Pepper Race in Arkansas this weekend.

Hey there, this is Adrienne DiRaddo, a freshman on the girls cross country team at the wonderful university we call Vanderbilt. I've had a great time in Nashville so far, but I'll tell you more about that later. For now, I'm going to catch you up on events from the weekend of the last meet.

For our first travel meet, the Vanderbilt girls cross country team had the pleasure of traveling through "America's Historical Triangle," (don't ask, it was a really long day of traveling, anything was funny) to get to the meet at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va. With plenty of time to bond from our bus ride to the airport, layover in the ATL, and finally touching down in Richmond, we scanned the radio stations for some car trip sing-a-longs, and oh did we sing a long. Once we checked into the fabulous Embassy Suites, complete with an omelet station, we went out to jog the freshly mowed course just outside the State Hospital.

After climbing the huge incline (more like a wall) after the downhill start, we were ready to move on to the next order of events, invading Coach Keith's parents house to chow down on some fine Italian food. The team couldn't wait to eat Chicken Marsala and mounds of meatballs. We polished it off with some of Mrs. Keith's famous brownies. After a quick team meeting, we were on our way to rest up for the next morning's meet.

After some tough competition and blistered feet, the girls conquered the first 6k of the season, and for me, the first 6k of my life... which of course meant a PR...haha.

Now it was time to head back home. We had some downtime till our flight, which meant a stop by what we decided was an Asian fusion restaurant that doubled as sushi and Chinese. This is where we met our new pal Eduardo (pictured), or Eddy as he liked to be called, who served some fine sashimi and introduced a few girls to the wonders of egg drop soup. Some liked it; to others, it was not well received. I thought it was cooked well, but the real competition of the day came down to who got closest to sir Eddy in the picture.

Even though that was a small sample of all the craziness that took place, we had so much fun on our first travel meet and can't wait to do it all over again!